Black-Light Ecologies

Abstract

In the midst of climate catastrophe-a warming rate twice the global average, raging wildfires, surging floods-the Canadian addiction to pipelines and oil sands exploitation remains unchecked. The spectacle of a settler colony desperately turning more oil into state revenue, while ravaging Indigenous lands and simultaneously preaching environmental sustainability, could inspire a dark sort of laughter: catastrophe as camp. But could the ridiculousness of our predicament foster new forms of inter-species intimacy and collective transformation? This is the wager taken by Bears, a production by playwright/director Matthew MacKenzie and Alberta's Punctuate! Theatre which has toured widely since 2018. The play tells the story of Floyd, a Cree-Métis pipeline worker who finds himself on the run from the Mounties after committing an act of sabotage. Floyd narrates his westward escape in collaboration with a chorus of eight dancers who transform into the flora and fauna alongside the Trans-Mountain pipeline route: prairie gophers, berry patches, orcas, and grizzlies. Black light, shifting video projections and electronic beats provide a backdrop as Floyd, in his flight from the state, slowly finds himself turning into a bear. With the help of his Mama, a protective figure who moves freely about the stage, Floyd eventually manages to wipe off the oil that has obscured his connection with his ancestors and with the land. Yet Floyd's journey is not an escape into a romantic ‘nature’ or a commodified Indigenous spirituality. As Floyd moves through devastated landscapes, the chorus animates a black-light vision of our collective future, and calls for solidarity between humans and other beings. Can we find a way to stand together for justice, as the play exhorts us, within a dark mess of our own making?

Notes

1 All references to Bears in performance are based on my viewing of it on 8 March 2019, at the Factory Theatre, Toronto, with electronic composition by Noor Dean Musani, environmental design by T. Erin Gruber and costumes by Monica Dottor and Brianna Kolybaba. All references to the text are from MacKenzie’s draft script (2018), which Punctuate! generously provided me.

2 That is, the 1970s Canadian rock group Bachman Turner Overdrive, and a coffee with two creams and two sugars.

3 On being-in-relation, Morton’s concept of ‘the mesh’ (2012) could learn much from Indigenous thought; see Todd (2016).

4 ‘Two-spirit Swampy Cree Scholar Alex Wilson defines Two-Spirit as a “self-descriptor increasingly used by Aboriginal gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Canadians who live within a traditional Aboriginal worldview. It asserts that all aspects of identity (including sexuality, race, gender and spirituality) are interconnected and that one’s experience of sexuality is inseparable from experiences of culture and community”’ (cited in Scudeler 2016: 197).

5 As in the well-known epigraph, by Lyle Longclaws, to Tomson Highway’s 1989 play Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing: ‘before the healing can take place, the poison must be exposed’ (cited in Nolan 2015: 7).

6 On the incommensurability of Indigenous and non- Indigenous experience, see Tuck and Yang (2012).